EVs have more reliability problems than gas cars, says Consumer Reports
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Consumer reports did a report showing Tesla had so many more recalls, but most of the recalls were just software updates that fixed driving software.
I'm much more concerned with not having my car breakdown, than random issues like not getting the charging range I expected or needing a software update, etc.
I don't find the brand by brand reliability ranking very useful when comparing vehicles that have a very different profile from the other's. I need more meaningful data to make a judgment on buying vs not buying.
> CR is known for buying cars for its own test fleet, but for its annual auto reliability survey, the organization cast a wider net. Specifically, it gathered data from 330,000 owners of vehicles from model year 2000 onwards, and it uses that survey data to generate reliability scores for each vehicle and model year.
Sorry, 23 years.
I've been driving a Nissan Leaf for almost 2 years now. Charging is annoying but still dirt cheap, both at home and in the road.
I know I've had this car for less than 2 years but it works fine. It's been great so far and it's probably the worst full EV you can buy in the US.
I find it strange that there are so many alarmist articles saying how EVs aren't the panacea they're cracked up to be. But that was never how they were advertised.
You are right and so are the articles. Boring EVs like Nissan built are supremely reliable and cheap to run and inexpensive to repair when they do have issues, but unfortunately that's not the case for everyone else.
EV market is unfortunately dominated by "fancy EV" manufacturers who have loaded the cars with fancy structure and LCD screens everywhere. Teslas and Rivians cost upwards of 10K to repair (Rivian R1T requires 20K+ for repairs for low-speed rear-end) with months long parts backlog for things like rear quarter panels. Rivian recently accidentally bricked 10% of cars on road with a new OTA firmware update while Tesla is involved in several lawsuits over its Autopilot. The story is same with other manufacturers.
We don't yet have a "Toyota" of EV makers who would make a range (Sedan, SUV and a Truck) of great, reliable cars that look nice, are nearly boring to drive and inexpensive to repair.
Personally I think it still has very good cruise control (adjusts speed based on traffic and can come to a complete stop, makes an attempt to stay in the lane, maintains a safe following distance) and errors on the more conservative side (will turn off the lane maintenance feature if the lines become too difficult to see). None of that is "self driving" I guess but I find it impressive and useful still.
> EVs are still in their relative infancy as mainstream vehicles, so it’s really not surprising that manufacturers, by and large, are still working out the kinks. That said, we are seeing signs of movement in the right direction.
The teething problems we are seeing with EVs are because they are new, not because they are EVs
If, for instance, I wanted to judge how reliable a brand of car is, I would want the data: how often they have major failures, how many miles they can go between major service issues, how many are still on the road etc., the actual data about reliability. However, the only data that consumer reports usually uses is what random polled people THINK about the reliability of the brand.
Even worse, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. They publish reports saying, for example, brand X is the most reliable brand of truck. People read those articles, and it influences their belief of which brand of truck is most reliable. Then Consumer Reports ask them next year what brand of truck they think is most reliable, and now they're more likely to say brand X, and so it's published that brand X is still the most reliable. Its an ouroboros with no actual data underneath it all.
But that is incorrect. It's not a survey of people's "thoughts." Survey participants:
"are asked to identify problems that they considered serious (because of cost, failure, safety, or downtime). We ask them to include problems covered by warranty, but not the ones resulting from accident damage or due solely to recall. Respondents check off problems from a list of trouble areas, ranging from the engine and transmission to climate system, brakes, electrical system, and electrical accessories..."[0]
Can you explain how this is "not actual data"? If it isn't, what would you expect instead -- that Consumer Reports buy a statistically significant number of all cars by all manufacturers every year and drive every single one thousands of miles and then calculate the reliability of each one?
0. https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-s...
As an EV owner (and someone who owned a Prius when hybrids were new), I find a lot of the supposed issues they raised seemed trumped up and not at all something I found anecdotally as well as from friends/family or forum users online.
I used to really like them but even outside of automotive, a lot of their recommendations simply didn't pan out well.
I think it makes a clear distinction between EV, plug-in hybrids and non-plug-in hybrids
If you want a harder problem, it’s electric building heat in cold climates.
That said my basic calculation for New Zealand is additional 50% is needed. Probably easy peasy if we get over lobby given how much existing hydro we have and capacity for sun and wind.
Using Chinese offshore wind turbine costs my estimate was 1/3rd of some major railway project cost we are considering…
You are vastly, vastly underestimating the amount of investment required. It's in the trillions of dollars.
Electric vehicles will add 20% to our electric energy requirements, but a lot less than 20% to our power requirements. Peak power is ~6PM during times of extreme weather. Some cars are being charged at that time, but most are charged overnight.
https://electrek.co/2023/11/21/tesla-launches-supercharger-c...
[1] https://www.wxxinews.org/local-news/2023-02-07/complaints-ov...
You may think we need we therefore need a 33% increase in power generation just for every household to have a single EV, but that's not quite true. We need to factor in that residential electrical usage only comprises 40% of total electrical usage. That 33% increase suddenly becomes a 13.2% increase.
Even that's not the whole picture because refining oil to make gasoline requires 5 kWH of power per gallon. Most of that power comes from burning oil, but 40% of it is coming off the grid. That's 2 kWH of power coming off the grid to refine that 1 gallon of gas. Since the average American drives 37 miles per day, we'll say they're consuming roughly 1.5 gallons of gas per day, which used 3 kWH of power from the grid to refine.
If you work it all through you end up needing an 8% increase in generation to support every single US household having an EV (and it's an additional 8% for every additional EV). Sounds like a lot, right? No. There are vast differences in the demand for power from on-peak (during the day) and off-peak (during the evening) power. Vast enough that households can charge two EVs at night during the off-peak period and still not constrain the grid.
Getting back to your question - what kind of power grid can supply electricity to a country full of EVs? The grid we already have.
Because by the time the EV left the dealership, it already polluted more.
But over the life of the car, because they're not burning gasoline, the overall carbon footprint of an EV is lower. Even if your electricity comes from 100% coal, eventually the carbon footprint of the ICE will exceed the EV because burning coal at a massive scale to create electricity is more efficient than a small combustion engine, where well over half the energy is just waste heat.
And if your electricity comes from 100% renewables, then the carbon footprint is merely the manufacturing and will be significantly lower over the life of the car.
There is more pollution from breaks and tires than tailpipes. And EVs still use those.
Then, if gas lawn equipment like a mower or leaf blower pollutes more than several cars, then how much do you think the machines use in mining, agriculture, wood industry, etc. pollute?
More than 90% of the pollution comes from that equipment. None of those use a catalytic converter.
So even if you replace every car with an EV, the net pollution reduction will be marginal.
Who cares?
Are there millions of pieces of this equipment in our cities? No? EVs cut down on smog in cities. They also cut down on CO2 output. These are substantial wins.
This is false. There is some pollution from brakes and tires but nowhere close to the pollution from tailpipes. Also regen braking reduces almost all the pollution from brakes.
Absolute hogwash. Where could you even get that idea?
How much material is there in a set of tires that you will lose over the life of the tire? How many miles will it take to lose that material? Now consider how many hundreds of gallons of gas you will burn before those tires wear out.
> So even if you replace every car with an EV, the net pollution reduction will be marginal.
[0] According to the EPA, 29% of greenhouse gases emitted in the USA come from Transportation. Of that, only 58% of that comes from "Light-Duty Vehicles", ie, cars. That means if we replaced all cars with EVs, it would be ~17% reduction in GHG.
Whether or not 17% is "marginal" is somewhat subjective on your definition of the word.
https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-...
Most of the grid will handle it fine. People in very rural areas where it's common to only get 60 amp service might have a problem. But they probably weren't going to get an EV anyways.
Norway does have a pretty strong grid. It has primarily used electricity for heating, with some wood but not much gas. People are transitioning to heat pumps and improving insulation as well so the load on the grid from heating is actually going down too.
Other countries may eventually need some grid upgrades. But how is that an insurmountable issue? The grid has been upgraded in response to increased demands many times before.
The same battery tech going into EVs is helping improve and stabilise the grid, and helping some people reduce their energy consumption from the grid to near zero with solar+battery storage. So seems like EVs help contribute to the exact kind of R&D needed to take some of the added load off the grid.